Only a Wisp of Smoke
by Seta Suzume
Summary: Peeta is an artist. So was (is?) Poppy.


author's note: please be warned for substance abuse and discussion of death, killing, and violence

"There may be a great fire in our soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way."

-Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo, 1880

Painting was her talent too, back when they even remembered she had one. "Oh," Poppy says, at the lovely display of that young boy's paintings. They look so real onscreen as if they were right here in the room with her. She can imagine the smell and texture of the paint. She reaches out to touch them and finds her fingers merely pressed against the screen. Not real. Well, real, but not here, not in her living room. Those textures, those brushstrokes, those colors.

"Did you see, Sim?" Poppy asks her mentor.

And he doesn't say anything. Sim always answers her so she knows. Poppy looks around and realizes he isn't here. He's in his own home. She goes and picks up the phone. She doesn't remember his number. She holds the receiver up to her ear as her hand wavers over the numbers, trying to remember. Maybe she never knew.

At length her confusion is answered by the Capitol woman she thinks of as the operator. "Poppy, who would you like to call?" the sugar-sweet voice asks her.

"Sim," she smiles as she says it, glad for the assistance and pleased by that eternally friendly tone at the other end of the line. People were supposed to like the victors, weren't they? Well, outside of that Capitol, Poppy had found that was hardly ever true. When she had come back and everything had sounded too loud and she couldn't stop shaking and being afraid, no one at home had been nice or friendly toward her but Sim. And when Sim brought her needles and showed her how to take the medicine that would make everything a bit softer and muffled and easier to handle then Dad and Aven and Jurvet were so mad.

Everything was upsetting. She had been glad then not to have to go back to school. The only thing she could enjoy was lying on her brand new soft bed in her big Capitol-given house and painting pictures through the fog of the medicine.

Morphling was for pain, right? If it was good for pain of the body, why not pain of the mind?

"I'm connecting you now," the woman announces. She isn't a telephone operator, she's an official Capitol monitor assigned by Victor Affairs to District Six, but Poppy doesn't understand that. It doesn't mean she minds connecting these calls though. District Six's two living victors don't exactly do a lot.

Across the street, Sim's phone is ringing. While listening to it ring over the line, Poppy can imagine it jumping anxiously for attention in Simeon's house. It rings seven times before Simeon picks up. "Hi Poppy," he says. That's how he always answers. It's a good bet that the only one calling will be her.

"Sim," she twists the cord of the phone around her fingers, "Were you watching? Peeta's a painter. Such a good painter…"

"You're a good painter," her mentor counters.

"He's better. You're just saying that because…well, either because you didn't actually watch or because you're my mentor."

"Both," he says honestly.

"Turn it on and watch," Poppy implores him with a sigh. Something so beautiful, she wants to share it with someone. And for Poppy, Sim is always that person. Sim is a good listener. Sim doesn't think himself an artist, but they paint together sometimes and Poppy feels differently. Sim has an artist's heart too. He understands.

There's some noise on his end of the line. "Are you watching?" she asks.

"You're not watching now," Simeon realizes, "They're showing the girl."

"Katniss. You know he painted her- lots of paintings of her, so beau-," Poppy looks back to her television screen and realizes Sim is right, they're not showing anymore of Peeta's lovely paintings, instead, Katniss is talking stiffly about the clothes she designed. "Oh," Poppy's next sigh is of disappointment.

"They'll play it again," Simeon comforts her. "I'll watch then."

"Tell me," she requests.

"Of course," he promises.

Peeta and Katniss come to their district and Poppy puts on her favorite dress which is white and soft and spangled with a messy pattern of every-colored flowers and shows up early, excited, but also safely medicated, because the crowd and the noise and the cameras might frighten her if she doesn't.

"Ms. Lowell," the mayor asks nervously as he oversees all the last-minute preparations that things like Victory Tours tend to entail, "What are you doing here?"

"Came to see Katniss and Peeta," she chirps, "I came and saw Tinsel last year, remember? And Valens before that. …And neither of them were _painters_," she stresses the part that's important to her, "I want to see them be in love. M-maybe," her drug-widened pupils expand ever further as the idea strikes her, "Maybe I'll paint good again! Maybe I'll paint them!"

The mayor regards her skeptically and waves over a Capitol liaison to inquire as to what he should do here, because Victor Lowell is by no means part of any of the recent troubles in the district- she probably doesn't even know that they've occurred- but the information he received about this year's Tour was quite explicit- no previous victors should be allowed to meet with the Capitol's new darlings.

The mayor is relieved as the Capitol liaison agrees to take matters into his own hands. "Ms. Lowell," he extends his hand and when she doesn't take it simply reaches out and grips it firmly on his own, "Come this way. We'll get you properly situated."

But where he leaves her isn't a good spot at all. There are Peacekeepers in her way and she can't see. When she tries to stand on her seat the Peacekeepers get angry.

She can't see the real and here Katniss and Peeta one bit. Even their oversized images on the big screen are halfway blocked from her view.

Maybe Sim knew it would be like this. Maybe that's why Sim didn't come. Poppy slumps down in her seat and wishes that Sim had come anyway. He is taller and could have told her what she was missing. "I will always look out for you," he said, because he was her mentor. A good mentor who said it wasn't wrong to hide. Who brushed her hair when she was in the hospital. Who taught her about the morphling medicine.

It reminds her of Haymitch all of the sudden. Where did they stick him for this? Haymitch is a good mentor too. Actually, he must be the best mentor, because no one else has done what Haymitch did. She wonders if he would like it if she made him a congratulations card. He had said something nice about her paintings before. …But it was a long, long time before now. It was her own Victory Tour.

Haymitch had liked the paintings best of birds.

After the speeches, Peacekeepers take her home. "I walked her myself," Poppy tells them, but they don't listen to her and she's always hated to complain, so she gives in and lets them drive her. Sim is standing across the way on his lawn when she gets there.

"Hey," he shouts as they let her out of the car, "Let her alone! She's with me!" The words are his same old questionably useful talisman to keep his victor safe. A Peacekeeper shoots him a hand gesture that might be very rude back in Two, but isn't familiar to the victors of Six.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Poppy insists, smoothing down her dress. The Peacekeepers have more important things than this, of course, and drive away. The district is riotous, but perhaps they should be glad that unlike in Eight or Four or Three the victors they deal with don't have barely covert ties to the rebellious madness. Victors are harder to discipline than ordinary citizens because if you do it wrong, everyone's angry from Snow to the citizens. He was a psychopath, not a rebel, but Peacekeepers of this generation know what heads among their parents' generation rolled when someone shot and killed Jeymes Grim in the Capitol to stop a massive back alley bar brawl.

Poppy and Simeon aren't anything aren't anything like that.

Poppy is all but oblivious to the crowd's flashing of the rebel-rousing symbol that led the mayor and liaisons together to think it was best that Six's own symbol, a victor, however pathetic, be quickly put away out of sight. Poppy may be self-medicated, but that doesn't mean she's useless. In the proper circumstances, anyone can be a martyr.

Poppy paints a card to send to Haymitch. As it has to route through the Capitol and the Victor Affairs office rather than moving directly from Six to Twelve, it will be slow in arriving, but he has two young victors for neighbors now. Poppy hardly thinks he will soon stop feeling happy over them anytime soon. Maybe he and Katniss cause each other to bristle a bit, but Poppy gets the feeling Haymitch likes that kind of thing. It's why he always seems more at home at talking to Song, even if she were a Career, than sincerer outlier victors of his cohort, like her or Miranda or Dace.

She knows enough to want to paint a Mockingjay. She also knows enough to think she shouldn't- that taken straight it might not make it through the censors. She invites Sim over and they talk about colors while he sits on her paint-stained couch with his feet on her coffee table. He's good at talking about colors, describing them.

Poppy won't forget how he did it when she was in the hospital while she was recovering from the special surgery to fix the acid burns that had blinded her. She had felt so vulnerable, so scared. But Sim had held her hand, had brushed and braided her hair, had helped her to eat. She had wondered why it was that no one in Six seemed to care much for him when he had told her those things- the precise shade of white of the pristine hospital floor, the pink peach hue of health coming back into her face, the shimmering silver of the dress the stylist had made her to celebrate her victory in- why, Sim was a poet.

So Sim chatters on and Poppy paints birds. She heard it once from old Mr. Hiro- overheard it really, he was talking to Khamphan, the one with with the beautiful glass eye- one thousand paper cranes to get your wish. What will uncounted painted Mockingjays get you?

Poppy paints them over and over in all sorts of colors, so maybe most of them don't look quite like proper Mockingjays, but that's still what she means them to be. She likes the loose pattern they form, their lights and darks, their beaks and feet and feathers.

It makes for an excessively oversized card, but she can't imagine the idea of putting scissors to her pretty piece. "Sim, do you like it?" she urges her mentor up to come see because it hasn't dried enough yet for her to take it off the table.

"It's like a whole storm of birds," he waves his hands to emphasize his excitement with the piece, "It's like- wow- I like it!" his coherency falters, "_I'd_ love it! I'm sure Haymitch'll like it too."

In a wondrous mood over the best thing Poppy feels she's painted in ages, she decides to actually cook a nice dinner for Sim and herself for the first time in months. The morphling takes away much of her appetite and usually she gravitates toward things that are pre-cooked and only need to be heated or she goes into the diner beside the train station that mainly serves Peacekeepers and is able to pick at someone else's cooking. Her oldest brother, Aven, won't allow her to come to his house since his children were born, worried to have her around them and then that she's a bad example. Her second brother, Jurvet, the family's middle child lives with other workers in a dormitory, but she doesn't seem him around much either. Back in her teenage years, but before she was reaped, she used to cook for the whole family.

She makes it to boiling the water for…something, before it all becomes rather foggy. She looks around at the pans and cans and such that she'd set on the counter. What was it she meant to make? …And can she even remember how to make it?

"I…I don't think I can cook today," she turns back into the sitting room and admits to Sim.

But Simeon doesn't mind. As long as Poppy stays alive, whatever she can or can't do is good enough for him. He volunteers to take over and bakes his specialty- fruit-from-a-can cake, inevitably sloppy and burned where some of the haphazardly whipped up mix spills over the top of the pan. He looks through Poppy's cupboards to find something to top the cake off with and make it more festive.

He carries it into the sitting room covered in star-shaped sprinkles. Poppy is giddy with her colorful day. She forgets to mail the card out to Haymitch until the following morning.

The aged and ominous card is read for the Third Quarter Quell before any word returns from Haymitch regarding the cheerful and over-sized one.

Poppy and Simeon watch together in Poppy's house. There are only two living victors in District Six. There are no alternatives. Poppy screams and screams. Simeon can't calm her by holding her or stroking her hair or talking about colors, though he tries, while quivering himself. He allows himself a larger dose. He needs it to manage his nerves. He needs it for Poppy as much as himself. As soon as the cool, numbing feeling settles in he tries again with Poppy who is sobbing and clutching her stomach.

"Let me help, let me help," he readies another syringe.

It isn't enough.

He gives her more.

When she's quiet at last she becomes so still, so quiet that Simeon has a momentary scare that he's given her too much. …Maybe it was more than he should have, but she's breathing. Simeon watches Poppy doze and wonders then if it would really be so bad. If maybe as her friend and mentor it might be his job to do this too. He can't picture any combination of competition either of them could win out against. Even without a single other human opponent gunning for them, does either of them have a chance against the arena? And then…he looks at his kit…there's withdrawal.

What could the Capitol do to him for killing her here "accidentally" that would be worse than both of them going back into the arena to die there?

He watches her longer. There are dark circles like smeared mascara under Poppy's eyes. Her face is sunken, her cheekbones pronounced, her skin the color of fancy mustard spread thin across white bread. She used to be so pretty. Pretty enough that people- strangers- wanted her. But he's helped her in his way. Helped her to live, to forget.

He remembers his own mentor, Sunny. The ruddy, healthy sienna of her skin. He had hated her when she'd asked him if he were sure he really wanted to come out of the arena alive. He had thought she had to be the most evil woman in all of Panem to suggest to a teenager ready to set aside his conventional morals to try to fight and kill that he might rather die.

He wonders now if she might've been the strongest person in all of Six. How did she do it for all those years? How did she watch them fight and die- until he lived. She didn't drink. She didn't abuse drugs. She lived by herself. Sure, she had talked to herself sometimes, aloud and in the third person, but with all she did, didn't she deserve that comfort of being left alone with that small tic?

No one had been angrier at him for turning to the morphling than Sunny had, but he had still hated her then, so he hadn't cared what she thought. They hadn't made up before she died. Simeon was sorry about that. He was sorry she hadn't lived to meet Poppy. If she had been around then, maybe she could have helped Poppy the right way. Maybe he wouldn't have done this to her.

There was another victor in Six before all of them who'd died from the morphling, but that was before Simeon had even been born. Only Sunny'd known him.

Simeon can't hurt Poppy. He adjusts her position and covers with a blanket, trying to make her comfortable.

They sink into their own respective quicksands of bad feeling. By the day of the reaping, the Capitol monitors are the only outsiders who can speak to the fact that they're still living. The mayor politely requests that Peacekeepers escort them from their homes to the stage.

They carry on highly drugged and quiet through the pre-Games proceedings, until, "Sim! Poppy!" Haymitch's voice isn't exactly cheerful and he doesn't smile, but he waves and as he approaches their chariot.

"Hi, Haymitch," Poppy greets him.

"I wanted to tell you in person. I got your card. I liked it."

"I wanted to…" Poppy thinks over her words, "I wanted to meet Peeta. I love his paintings. I… I guess I _do_ get to meet him now. Just not how I wanted."

"Yeah," Haymitch takes her hand and grips it tight, holding her gaze with his gray eyes, "Please, Poppy do. Talk to Peeta. I think you're both going to like him."

"Just about everyone's here," Haymitch goes on, "So make sure you talk to them." His clever eyes dart away from Poppy's face for a moment to Simeon's, "I mean both of you, Sim."

"Sure, sure," Simeon agrees.

"As bad as it looks, there are still things I think you're going to want to do," he goes on earnestly.

Poppy squeezes Haymitch's hand in return. Whatever it is, she wants him to trust them. They're friends. She and Sim will certainly listen.

It's inevitable that when the time to train comes, they gravitate to the paints at the camouflage station. Where one might expect mainly browns and tans and greens, there are pigments of all sorts available.

"I like this color," Poppy exclaims over a pot of bright pink. She untwists the top and dips her finger in.

Sim follows her lead, the goes further, reaching out and dabbing a spot on her face.

Poppy laughs.

Encouraged her response, Sim goes further, drawing a circle of pink on her cheek. Poppy paints him equally in return.

A young man approaches them- he's familiar, he's- "Hi," he says, "I'm-"

"Peeta," Poppy finishes for him, "I know. …We all know." Somehow it makes her giggle. Peeta has a very kind smile. "This is Sim. My name's Poppy."

"She wanted to meet you," Sim says.

"'Cuz I love your paintings," Poppy sighs. What if Peeta dies? And that's it for his life and his dreams and his paintings? What if Katniss dies and Peeta is too sad to live or love or paint ever again?

Cecelia said that Katniss and Peeta were important. Song said, "We'll do what we can for you- Theo's working on the, uh, stuff to tide you over. But if you're with us, that means they have to come first. There's an order to this alliance. You fall before them."

Poppy understands. They're young and they're loved and they have a chance. Peeta is a better painter than she ever was, than she would ever be.

"I was," Poppy tells Peeta, and it feels so important, "I was- am- a painter too."

"Not me," Sim grins, holding up his paint-covered hands, "I'm just playing."

"It was- is- my talent," Poppy clarifies.

"Really?" Peeta answers, "I didn't know someone else shared my talent. I hope you don't think I'm stealing your thunder." His interest seems so sincere. His eyes are so very blue. "So, your painting," he asks, "Will you tell me about it?"

"The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."

-Vincent van Gogh


End file.
